When Dutch Van Der Linde, Micah Bell and Arthur Morgan stumble across Violet Adler after a crisis that robbed her of the last family she had-her dearest brother, Jake Adler, and beloved sister-in-law, Sadie-she's offered a home. A temporary one, unt...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The open country was a freedom of the most troubling kind.
Look into the horizon, a disembodied voice practically beckoned from the distance, under the low-hanging sun. No boundaries out here, no restrictions imposed by a hotheaded Braithwaite, yet you flounder like a lost maiden who isn't cut out for gripping her life by the reins. Embarrassing.
Even now in the wagon, enveloped in an amiable silence with Arthur, I was nagged by the incessant thought that I wasn't doing enough. As if time was eroding rapidly with each minute that ticked by, and I was stuck in the mud, where I'd be until it was too late. Until I had nothing worthwhile to show that maybe I'd lived a life that rendered me deserving of being here, instead of Jake and Sadie Adler.
"Is something troubling you?"
Arthur held the reins loosely and leaned back as he pointedly looked at me.
"Oh, just...never been to this part of the country before." It was the most simplified version, a semi-truth that eased my inexplicable urge to not lie so blatantly to this man. "Unless passing through on a train counts."
"Passin' through to where?"
"Rhodes," I answered, checking his face for a reaction. No recognition there, that was good. "My husband's family lives out that way." The conniving people that stuck their claws in the roots of a town they deemed desperately in need of a conglomerate to run ill-gotten money through the shadows.
"Just visited, then," he noted. "So where'd you live?"
"Strawberry." I angled my body toward him. "I heard you had some awful business there recently."
A muscle in his jaw ticked and he gave a single nod. "Should've let Micah hang. He shot his cellmate, then half the law in the damn town. He's lucky he wasn't being held closer to camp. Commotion like that would have Pinkertons sniffing us out in a second."
"Then why doesn't Dutch cut him loose?"
Arthur just laughed, a sharp, humorless sound.
"I guess it's not so simple," I murmured.
He exhaled, the motion doing little to relax the tension in his shoulders. "No, it ain't. Dutch likes his...what'd he call it..." He scratched his stubble, thinking. "His fire. To me, that's another word for recklessness."
"Well, next time Mister Bell gets himself in a scrape with the law, do nothing and tell Dutch you did your very best to break him out, but unfortunately..." I sighed, feigning forlornness. "You were too late."
"Why, Miss Adler." Arthur's deep voice swelled with exaggerated shock. "You're hidin' your ruthlessness from the rest of us. Burying your nose in a book at camp, when really, you're plotting vengeful acts against the next person that rubs you the wrong way."
